Going to Plan
by Khilari
Summary: Co-written with Persephone Kore. Fifth in the "Agatha's Bad Plan" series, which goes AU with Agatha's attempted rescue of Passholdt. After the excitement surrounding Otilia, everything goes basically right for a little while. Gil and Otilia get a chance to talk, and Agatha learns more about her family history and - with a bit of support from the Baron - finishes repairing her home.


Agatha, to be honest, still felt a little shaky on the way up from Lucrezia's lab. She told herself that the Muse who was actually the Castle-mind would talk to the Castle that had acknowledged her, and they'd get that sorted out; and Von Pinn who was actually a Muse had protected her from it and wanted her functional now, so they should be able to get _that_ sorted out too. She kept an eye on the Castle and her hand on the trigger of the harmonic cone anyway.

Von Pinn pushed ahead of the Castle to open the correct exit for them, and then fell back as half a dozen Jägers tried to come through the doorway at once.

This being Castle Heterodyne, they nearly fit.

'It's okay,' Agatha said quickly. 'I'm all right, I'm sorr-mmgf.' She could have done without being grabbed unexpectedly again, but General Zog clasping her in a hug (and not very subtly sniffing her) was considerably less alarming than being picked up by the throat by an angry Castle. Agatha rested her head against a furry shoulder and went limp for a moment while the Castle-Muse demanded answers from the Castle proper, which couldn't hear it; the Baron and the rest of the Jägers all tried to ask questions at once; and Zeetha tried to elbow her way in to check on Agatha. 'I meant to be out a bit sooner.'

'Are you really okay?' Zeetha's voice was almost in her ear. Agatha tried nodding, and Zeetha poked at her cheek. It stung. She'd tried to protect her eyes and throat, but a chip of stone must have caught her there.

'Vot vas you _doing_?' Ognian, speaking to Von Pinn, sounded slightly too frazzled to be properly menacing. Von Pinn only looked at him tiredly.

'I _would_ like an explanation-' said the Baron, stern but calmer, and apparently trying to get between the Jägers and Von Pinn. His eyes flicked to Agatha and away again. She blinked.

The Castle-Muse's voice rose above all the rest. 'Why am I not answering myself?' It shook a fleur-de-lis patterned fist in the air.

Agatha decided this was quite enough and straightened up. 'Hey - HEY! One thing at a time!' Everyone stopped talking, which was gratifying, and looked at her expectantly. 'Castle, there's been some damage. We're still in a dead zone. Go that way.' She pointed. The Castle-Muse looked at her suspiciously and stalked off. 'Everybody else, Mistress Von Pinn showed me Lucrezia's secret lab. I'm assuming Lucrezia wouldn't have been thrilled, which probably explains some of the weirder behaviour.' Hopefully that would encourage the Jägers to be alert but forgiving, or something like that. They looked more relieved than happy, and they appeared to have been following either their noses or the trail of tools Von Pinn had taken from her. Good thing this outfit had a lot of pockets. 'She was working on mind transfer. Von Pinn's supposed to be in the Muse.'

'Otilia,' said the Baron, sounding very slightly awed, as discussion broke out again. He turned to Von Pinn, who had slumped against the wall, and his eyebrows drew together. 'You, I think, need some rest. Lady Heterodyne, do you mind if I send her back to Castle Wulfenbach?'

Von Pinn, or Otilia, pushed away from the wall. 'I must not go.'

Agatha frowned. She wasn't sure why Von Pinn should be collapsing. _She_ hadn't been the one getting strangled and shoved into graves. Then again, she'd obviously been under a lot of stress, and the command conflicts probably had been exhausting. 'It's fine with me if you leave.'

'No.' Von Pinn - Otilia, darn it - shook her head, swaying so that she looked a bit more wobbly than Agatha felt. (No wobbling in front of the Jägers, Agatha told herself. And definitely not in front of the Baron.) It was almost disorienting, after her lethal too-fast-to-follow motion earlier. 'I must not go. I will not. You are….' She bit her lip, lightly, and drew her teeth back fast. 'The Heterodyne Girl. You are mine to guard. And you have my body.'

The Baron sighed. 'Perhaps we could put her to bed somewhere here?'

Okay. Fine. 'I haven't exactly been looking for bedrooms, Herr Baron, but I'm sure we can find one. One where we won't want to set the mattress on fire, I'm less sure about. Hey!' Agatha addressed the returning Castle-Muse. 'Am I vouched for now?'

'Come out where the rest of me can find you.' The Castle-Muse examined her critically. 'I suppose you don't sound _much_ like Lucrezia.'

They did manage to find a bedroom for... Otilia, once the Castle convinced the Castle-Muse that only one of them knew anything about the current state of the bedrooms. The Baron soothed her into sleeping by solemnly promising her not to let Agatha destroy Europa during her nap and then rolled his eyes and looked pointedly at Agatha as soon as Otilia's eyes were shut. Agatha gave him an exaggeratedly innocent look and he backed hastily away from the bed and cleared his throat, mouth twitching.

As soon as they were out, everyone suddenly turned to her again. Agatha felt slightly pounced on.

'You should get those cuts looked at,' Zeetha said, trying to do just that. 'What exactly happened while you were gone?'

She couldn't announce _to the Castle_ that Otilia had attacked her, even if the Jägers had figured it out. 'I got trapped while I was in the dead zone,' she said. 'I had to build a bomb to get out.'

'Perhaps it's time you met Dr. Sun,' the Baron suggested.

'I don't think it's _that_ bad,' Agatha protested, a bit startled. She was sore all over and her ears were ringing, but she couldn't imagine it required the personal attention of the Spark who ran the Great Hospital.

'He vill vant to meet hyu eventually,' said Khrizhan, sounding amused.

That was probably true, although now she rather wished Sun had been included in the earlier round of introductions. 'There's a difference between a formal meeting and asking him to look at a bunch of fairly superficial injuries,' Agatha muttered.

'Don't self-diagnose,' said the Baron.

Agatha raised her eyebrows at him.

'Or at least don't tell him you've done it, unless you _want_ him to grouse at you.'

Agatha tried not to smile. 'Is that advice you ever actually follow?'

The Baron regarded the ceiling, which was admittedly sometimes prudent in here. 'A little grousing is good for him.'

That was... that _had_ to be a joke. On purpose. 'Somehow I never thought you'd actually be funny in real life,' Agatha blurted.

The Baron's eyes glinted. 'And sometimes it's even deliberate. Come, Lady Heterodyne. You have to admit that for all its marvels, your house is currently filthy.'

'Well, _yes_,' said Agatha. 'I wasn't arguing about getting cleaned up. It just doesn't require that much of a fuss.'

A fuss there was and would be regardless, however, because once they reached the Great Hospital the Baron went looking for its director after all, the rest of them tagging along because the Jägers found it amusing and Agatha didn't actually realise until the Baron leaned into an open office. 'Ah, Sun-' he began.

'Klaus!' barked the doctor, emerging from his doorway vehemently enough to set the Baron back on his heels. 'Just what have you done to yourself this time?'

Agatha gave up and started giggling.

'I haven't.' The Baron steered Agatha deftly around in front of him. 'Meet the new Heterodyne.'

Dr. Sun looked her over and extended one long finger to the cut on her cheek. 'I see you set off a bomb from inside a stone box. Come along, then, my lady.'

Agatha blinked. 'You must be remarkably experienced.'

Dr. Sun gave a longsuffering sigh. 'Adventurers,' he said, favouring the Baron with a dire look.

'I'm hardly that anymore,' said the Baron.

'_Not that anyone could tell!_' Sun snapped. 'In here - no, not _all of you_,' he said testily. The Baron had stood back, but the younger Jägers clumped in the doorway and looked dubious about letting Agatha out of sight again.

'Hyu sure hyu don't vant us here, Miz Agatha?' Maxim asked hopefully.

'Only if you keep your eyes shut!' Agatha shook her head. 'Um, really, no thank you.'

'How about if I come?' Zeetha offered, and Agatha and Sun both agreed.  
Dr. Sun cleaned out the cuts efficiently, painlessly, and without further scolding or embarrassment. At least not for Agatha. He proved to be willing to distract her with a handful of stories about the Baron. At one point she called out, laughingly, to the Castle to see if it would corroborate, and it didn't answer. 'Hm. Dead zone? It says it's supposed to be able to hear all over town.'

'Not in here,' said Sun.

Agatha gave that some consideration. After the next anecdote she said, 'By the way, I'd like to ask the Baron to come talk to me when you're done.'

Once Agatha was cleaned up and decent the Baron entered and said, 'Sun said you wanted to talk to me?' He didn't sound entirely surprised.

'Yes. Thank you.' Agatha consciously didn't bite her lip. 'About Otilia. There are some details I'm not sure the Castle or the Jägers need to hear.'

'The Jägers, at least, might have guessed she put you in the trap,' said Zeetha.

Agatha did catch her lip in her teeth then. 'She put me "back" in Euphrosynia's tomb.'

The Baron caught his breath, shock and, startlingly, sympathy playing across his face. 'She did call you the Heterodyne Girl. Is she still confused about that?'

'I don't think so.' Agatha hesitated. 'At least, I think she's aware I'm a _different_ Heterodyne Girl, but she considers the orders to apply to me too. To protect me, and to keep me safe in the sense of not dangerous to other people.'

'Tall order,' Zeetha remarked.

'Oh, thanks.' Agatha shut her eyes for a second. 'I don't have solid evidence, but I think she killed Euphrosynia.'

'She could have,' said the Baron. 'It seems odd to think of a Muse killing, after all I've read of them, but she never shied away from extreme violence towards any threat to her charges as Von Pinn. If she really thought Valois was in danger it wouldn't surprise me to see her take matters into her own hands.'

Agatha nodded. It was strange to think of Von Pinn as a Muse. Although from her perspective, it was almost as strange to remember that Baron Wulfenbach had probably also heard quite a lot about the Muses from Dr. Beetle. But she didn't have any trouble at all thinking of Von Pinn as a killer. 'I took a quick look at the notes on building her current body. She's not currently supposed to be capable of harming Lucrezia's daughter.' She grimaced. 'Hopefully by the time she's back in the right one, she won't want to. But I really hope we can get her to go home with you.'

'Yes.' The Baron frowned. 'The easiest way might be to bring Gil down and let him speak to her.'

'She's fond of him, I take it?' Zeetha asked.

'You have no idea,' Agatha said under her breath.

'When I first reached Mechancsburg after returning from Skifander, she'd been locked up since the death of Lucrezia's son drove her mad,' the Baron explained. 'I calmed her down partly by convincing her that Gil needed her, that he was going to need a protector - I had no idea how deeply that choice of approach probably affected the Muse of Protection. She's done more to raise him than anyone has, if she'll listen to anyone now it will probably be Gil.'

The death of Lucrezia's son.

Agatha did register the rest of what the Baron said. It explained a lot about Otilia's trust in him - he'd won it long since with trust of his own, and a new purpose that fit what she'd been made for (lifeline, _you don't have to stay like this_). It was still strange to think of Gil being brought up by her, though. He hadn't talked about her much. That part probably wasn't strange, when they'd been working in the shadow of her parents' reassembly.

'I expect she'll at least be glad to see him.' Even here. But. Lucrezia's _son_? 'I, ah... this is the first anybody mentioned I had a brother.'

The Baron's eyes widened slightly. 'I'm sorry. I forgot you wouldn't know. He was a little over a year old when the Castle collapsed.'

He'd died _then?_ Had Lucrezia meant that to happen? If Castle Heterodyne was right about her plans for Agatha herself, she didn't seem to have been that attached to her children. 'I should really go back to the Crypt anyway, to close up the tomb. Is he... there?' She might have walked over his grave without knowing it.

'Yes. I can show you the grave, if you wish.' The Baron looked concerned. 'But are you sure you want to be the one to close the tomb? I can do it, if you don't want anyone in Mechanicsburg to know it was opened.'

Agatha had been planning to take a clank or two, although she imagined that _might_ look a little strange even in Mechanicsburg. She rather suspected Baron Wulfenbach actually could do it on his own. 'I'd appreciate the help.'

* * *

Working with Agatha wasn't really like having Bill and Barry back, but she was _enough_ like them at odd moments - and enough like Punch and Judy, and sometimes like Lucrezia - that Klaus found the experience simultaneously familiar and terribly strange. It went smoothly enough, though, especially once they both forgot to worry about the politics of telling each other what to do. The heterodyning, even as a lone and higher voice, was still something he associated with companionable work and inspiration. He relaxed into it, old habit and current decision, for the hours it took them to reconstruct Lucrezia's work backwards and reunite the Castle with itself and Otilia with her original body.

Klaus knew perfectly well that Otilia couldn't actually fly with her wings whole, let alone the bare framework of them, but for a few seconds when she rose and stood framed in the window he thought she might anyway. Maybe it helped to have known her as Von Pinn; maybe it helped to know Castle Heterodyne; but he looked at her spread wings and head tilted back, relief and wonder in every line of her body, and he cursed every Spark down two centuries who had carefully claimed the Muses seemed _almost_ to have mind and emotion.

'Herr Baron?' Agatha was still watching Otilia, too, when he turned. 'While Otilia gets used to being properly herself again, maybe it would be a good time to go downstairs.'

'Will you be all right here?' he asked Otilia, and she turned to him, one hand still on the window sill, smiling in a way that hardly seemed possible with a face of metal plates.

'I shall be fine,' she said.

'Then it's probably better not to put it off,' he said, to Agatha this time. 'We can go.'

'Thank you.' They set off for the passageway, and Zeetha fell in with them along the way, abandoning a chat with the Castle about the virtues, or lack thereof, of keeping one's edged weapons wrapped in cotton-wool. Klaus was fairly sure this had been metaphorical. Agatha didn't take them by the most direct route; she led them down the spiral to Lucrezia's laboratory first. 'We'll want to spend longer here at some point, of course,' she said. 'But I thought you should know where it is.'

'Thank you. That fulfils your duty to report Other-tech to the Empire.' He was joking, kind of. She actually had agreed to do that, but he didn't think she was thinking about the treaty now, or that it would be her only reason.

It got a faint smile out of her, at any rate. 'I don't see anything that looks related to the hive engines, so far, but we'll see once we've gone through the rest of the notebooks.'

For now they only looked in for long enough for Klaus to wonder whose skulls Lucrezia had been putting through the autoclave and to hope she'd only taken up grave robbing. He had every intention of coming back later, especially to get a look at the large tubes to one side which could be any number of things, but were ominously big enough to contain a person each. Their duties in the Crypt had to be dealt with first, though, and they continued down.

When they reached the Crypt they were at nearly the opposite end from the entrance Klaus had last used, which was reached from the Red Cathedral. He led the way to the newest graves - under the floor, marked by flat stones - and Agatha, reading them, stopped walking before he said anything. Zeetha halted beside her and looked up at him.

Agatha crouched down to run a hand over her brother's gravestone. 'Named after you,' she said quietly.

'And Barry.' An equally unnecessary observation. The last time he'd been here, it hadn't struck him as strange. The last time he'd been here, he hadn't known that Barry was alive and avoiding him. Bill, at least, had thought this well of him not so very long before; what had happened?

Besides the obvious. And Bill had presumably trusted Lucrezia at the time, too. Klaus sighed and mouthed, _Keep her here,_ to Zeetha in Skiff, then appropriated the lava-welder and headed back to the ornate stone box they'd passed on the way in.

The stone lid had cracked into large pieces, perhaps guided by a slightly greater depth of the carvings. He made a little extra effort to lift and place the pieces together rather than dragging them, to minimise the grating of stone on stone, and fused the edges together.

While the melted rock cooled, he stole a moment to examine what was left of Euphrosynia. Of course, it was lately disarranged, but the injuries that had killed her were still written into the plates of the skull. Klaus put the skeleton in slightly better order and hauled the lid back into place. The seams showed, but not too badly.

Agatha and Zeetha quit talking and looked up as he came back. 'If you don't mind,' Agatha said, 'which are my grandparents'?'

'Here,' Klaus said, 'and here.' They were separated as far as had been possible without disrupting the pattern overmuch.

Agatha raised her eyebrows. 'Didn't get along?'

'I suppose the story wasn't told so much after the first few years,' Klaus said. 'She killed him.' This time he didn't reiterate what the inscriptions added to the story: she hadn't outlived her husband by so much as a day.

Zeetha looked up, then at Agatha, but didn't look startled. Klaus wondered suddenly if she'd heard more reliable stories from that circus than he'd normally expect.

Agatha sat back on her heels, eyes a little wide. 'I didn't know _that_. I'd heard she taught Bill and Barry to...' She paused. 'Not to be like him, I suppose. It never occurred to me she would have killed him.'

'She was told her family would be safe as long as she stayed with him,' said Klaus, not entirely sure how much he should tell her. 'Killing him was safer than leaving him, not for her but for those she cared about. Bill would not sanction revenge against his mother's people.'

'I'd imagine not,' Agatha said a bit faintly.

'It does sound like the best option,' said Zeetha, bowing formally to the grave.

Agatha stood, still looking down at it. 'Do you think they were expecting it?'

Zeetha glanced at her and got to her feet as well. 'I'd think they knew the situation.'

'I don't know,' said Agatha, a little defensively. Even in the dim greenish light of the Crypt, Klaus could see her cheeks darken. 'I realise I had reason to be particularly dense, but you can hide a lot from a kid, if nobody ever mentions it.'

'I doubt they knew what she was planning, but it was widely known she'd married under duress.' If nothing else, Klaus thought, she wouldn't have been treated in Mechanicsburg the same way a willing spouse would have been. He'd seen how the Jägers acted around people they disliked and felt they could get away with bullying and suspected some of the reasons for Bill and Barry's uncertainty about them. But he didn't want to pass those reasons on to Agatha when she was making her home here. 'Barry was only fourteen.'

'And Bill was sixteen.' Both younger than she was. Agatha had kept the deactivated locket on when she changed - twice now. There was a bright scratch marring it, from the shrapnel when she'd escaped the tomb. Her fingers went to it now, as if grounding herself, maybe trying to imagine the man who'd given it to her as a child. 'I suppose it probably was a shock.'

'Probably. It wasn't something they spoke about.' There had been enough rumours (and vigils held for a woman few people had ever had the chance to know) in the area around Mechanicsburg afterwards for Klaus not to have needed to get much from the source to have a general picture of the situation.

Agatha nodded and ran a dusty hand back through her hair. 'I suppose it shouldn't really be _surprising_ at this point.'

Klaus considered saying that a great many Heterodynes had had willing wives. But it would be more accurate to say a great many Heterodynes had had both willing wives and hostage concubines. 'Heterodynes have tended to take what they want from the world and very few people have managed to stop them. Bill and Barry were unusual in stopping themselves.' He paused, running his tongue over lips dried out by the dusty air. 'Mechanicsburg is not a bad place, but no one in it would consider restraining you. Working around you, or quietly dismantling anything too impractically dangerous once you've lost interest, but not restraining you. Punch and Judy raised you and I'm inclined to trust your morality, but don't trust theirs overmuch. Especially not the older generation.'

Agatha looked around the Crypt, gaze pausing on Iscariot Heterodyne and his multitude of so-called friends. 'Yes, I think I'll remember that.' She looked up at Klaus. 'I appreciate your confidence.'

'Believe me, I wouldn't have helped you get this far if you didn't have it. Talking of which, I believe we've left the repairs underway in good hands, so perhaps you should leave the dead zones for tomorrow and let them handle the heavy lifting in the active parts while you get some rest?'

Agatha blinked. 'But it's only... ah...'

'Suppertime,' Zeetha said, amused. 'You two both forgot to eat lunch, by the way.' She patted Agatha's arm. 'If you don't feel like you've done enough, I can-'

'Thank you anyway!' Agatha said over whatever _kolee_ threat Zeetha was about to propose.

* * *

Getting Otilia back to Castle Wulfenbach was easy enough, after all: Agatha was going, and Agatha was her only reason to be in Mechanicsburg. The trick would be getting her to stay there.

Agatha decided she could worry about that later. Ever since Zeetha had mentioned food, she'd been ravenous. The Baron and Otilia disappeared in different directions almost as soon as they were back on board; Agatha ate supper with Zeetha and the Jägers and without a lot of conversation, and then she took over the tray Wooster was trying to deliver to Gil.

'Busy!' Gil called when she knocked at the door.

'I know!' Agatha called back. 'Is that busy as in you can't get the door or busy as in if I open it myself, we'll have to evacuate?'

Gil laughed briefly. 'The first one.'

Agatha let herself in. Gil was working on something - not her parents, something small - in what appeared to be a tub of clear gel. She assumed the refractive index was less of an issue from above. 'You missed dinner.'

'I did not,' Gil objected. 'I can have it later if I-'

'I _brought_ you dinner,' Agatha said, laughing. 'You missed having it with me and Zeetha. And a bunch of Jägers, although I'll grant most people might not view that as a great loss.' Their table manners could be a little alarming, although Goomblast and sometimes Khrizhan and Maxim made a point of being more restrained.

'Does that mean you're not staying?' Gil extricated his hands and instruments gradually from the gel.

Agatha smiled wryly. 'Well... actually, no, I am.'

'Oh, good.' Gil beamed at her. 'So how did the repairs go?'

Agatha hesitated. 'Not badly, but we got a little sidetracked.'

'What happened?' he asked, turning on the tap to wash his hands and looking back over his shoulder at her.

'What _didn't_?' Agatha's mind immediately presented her with several alarming potential answers to that question. 'Er, everybody's fine,' she added hastily. 'Only, Mistress Von Pinn showed up and turned out to be secretly one of Van Rijn's Muses.'

'She _what?_' Gil hastily dried his hands and came over to the table. 'But she's not… she's got mechanical parts, but she's a construct, not a clank.'

Agatha pushed the tray across to him and rested her chin in her hands. 'Not always and not anymore. Lucrezia,' her mother, _not_ her mother, the mother who'd raised her was in a tank up there... _because_ of Otilia. Agatha sighed. They'd been fighting for her, desperate to get away, and while the Baron had certainly been terrifying at the time she still couldn't figure out everything that had led up to it. Gil was giving her an inquiring, baffled look, and she realised she'd fallen silent. 'Lucrezia had been experimenting with transferring minds from one body to another. She built a new one and moved Otilia into it, and gave her a new name.'

Gil stared at her, fork dangling forgotten from one hand. 'What - but - _why_? And where did she even _find_ a Muse?'

Agatha bit her lip and swiped the extra mug of cocoa she'd added to the tray. She had thought she might need it. (She thought Zeetha might recommend adding something alcoholic and ideally also chocolate, but probably not until after the explanation.) 'Otilia says she was assigned to protect the Heterodyne Girl and keep her safe for other people. I gather she spent quite a long time guarding Euphrosynia's grave.'

'She - thought people might be in danger from Euphrosynia's _corpse?_ Is she - okay?'

'She's... better.' Agatha fought the temptation to rub at the cuts on her jaw or hands. Most of them barely qualified as cuts now; she wanted the formula for whatever Dr. Sun had put on them. 'She seemed to be better once we sorted out that I was not, in fact, Euphrosynia back from the dead. She sounded outright happy once your father and I got her back into her own body.'

'She thought you...' Gil trailed off. 'Are _you_ okay?'

She looked down at the cocoa. 'A little shaken up. But we fixed it.' Her hands tightened around the mug. 'Being able to do that means a lot.'

He finally put his fork down and tentatively put a hand over hers. 'I'm sure it means a lot to her, too, to be in the right body again.'

Agatha sighed and uncurled her hand to wrap around his. 'Yes. She sounded like she really hated the other one. If somebody'd built one just so she could control me I suppose I wouldn't like it either.' She paused. According to Castle Heterodyne, Lucrezia had meant to... to inhabit hers. But it was the only one she had and she felt perfectly at home in it. 'At least not if it worked.'

'I suppose Lucrezia made sure she wouldn't be able to ask us for help.' Gil retrieved his fork with his other hand and remembered to take a mouthful of dinner.

'I think so. And her notebooks were peculiarly specific about making sure that as Von Pinn she wouldn't be able to harm... her or me.' She tapped the nails of her free hand nervously on the table, and Gil paused and looked up at her, eyebrows furrowing. 'I suspect that either she killed Euphrosynia, or Lucrezia thought she did,' Agatha said, a little too fast. 'She shut me in the tomb, luckily she didn't take all my tools first. Then after she decided I wasn't Euphrosynia, she showed me where the lab was.'

His hand closed tightly on hers. 'I'm sorry. Thank you for helping her, even after that.'

Agatha sighed a little shakily. 'Well, she did defend me when Castle Heterodyne woke up in her body and decided to strangle me because it thought I was Lucrezia.' She tried a smile, then gave up on it and shook her head. 'And then I spent several hours happily rebuilding some of the Other's work with your father, and he showed me where my older brother's grave was and told me Bill and Barry's mother was a captive bride and eventually killed her husband. I didn't even know I _had_ a brother. It's been a really weird day, Gil.'

Gil reached over and stroked a strand of hair back from her face. 'It sounds it. I didn't know you had a brother, either.'

Agatha tilted her head into the touch before she quite thought about it and then debated being embarrassed. 'His name was Klaus Barry. I guess my father missed yours.'

'That was nice of him.' Gil stood up and walked around the table so he could put an arm around her shoulders properly, his other hand stroking her hair back again.

_That_ felt nice. Agatha briefly tried to worry about the political implications and then decided she had spent too much time with Otilia today and leaned into Gil's side. He was very warm. She might not appreciate that so much on the ground in summer, but the great airship seemed to run cooler. So did Castle Heterodyne's tunnels. 'Anyway,' she said, 'the tricky bit is that Otilia's orders about the Heterodyne Girl might still apply to me, because apparently Valois and Van Rijn didn't believe in calling people by name or something. And we might _both_ be happier if she doesn't think she has to live with me. Your father thinks you might have the best chance of convincing her she doesn't.'

'I'll try,' said Gil. 'I can't countermand her orders, but I can try and talk her into using any loopholes she can find.'

'I expect the problem will be Van Rijn's orders,' Agatha said, trying not to yawn. It _had_ been something of a long day, or at least a very eventful one, and while she'd still been too adrenaline-charged to start dozing off against the wall like Otilia had at one point it was starting to catch up to her. 'At least some of Lucrezia's are gone. Anyway, I'm very well protected. The trick is convincing her I won't up and destroy Europa or something if she doesn't watch me.'

'She already knows _I_ don't think you'll destroy Europa,' said Gil.

'Then I don't know what you're supposed to do to convince her,' Agatha said ruefully, and lost the fight with the yawn. 'Ack. Excuse me.'

'Want me to carry you to bed?' Gil asked. 'You look like you're about to fall asleep here.'

Agatha straightened up rather abruptly, blushing. 'I should... ah... I should probably walk.'

Gil looked embarrassed too, as if he'd only just realised what he'd said. 'Sorry, perhaps that was... May I walk you to your room?'

Agatha ducked her head. 'Yes, thank you.' Then she glanced at the tray. 'Oh, but your dinner-'

'It'll keep for a few minutes. It's not like the school is at the other end of the airship.'

'We're not _at_ an end of the airship,' Agatha pointed out after a brief period of muzzy thought.

Gil grinned impishly at her, although it didn't quite reach his eyes. 'Even better.' He pulled her chair out - Agatha was pretty sure he'd just picked the whole thing up a few centimeters - and gave her his arm.

He pulled her closer by the shoulders, at the entrance to the school, and for a second Agatha thought he was going to kiss her, before he just rested his chin against her forehead for a moment. Agatha briefly contemplated kissing him again instead, but her cheeks warmed and she decided she had better sort out both the political implications and her own feelings better first. Right now she mostly felt sleepy. 'Good night,' she said, stepping back.

'Good night. And good luck tomorrow.' The door slid shut between them.

* * *

Gil found Otilia at the tailor's, picking out fabric for both a new dress and new wing covers. She had a sketched design for the wings; it involved thin wire in the pinions to make them stand out a little and enhance the effect of real feathers. Around her people were watching, awestruck, including the tailor who hadn't even thought to ask who was paying for the order she was in the process of making. Gil didn't think word that she had been Von Pinn had got around, except perhaps as rumour. Certainly this wasn't the fear Von Pinn had inspired. Although he had never seen her shop as Von Pinn. He had never, in fact, seen her request anything for herself.

Now Otilia was looking at a book of dress designs, hand resting thoughtfully on her cheek, seeming absorbed by the question of which would suit her. It came as a shock to realise Von Pinn's lack of vanity had not been her nature, but a result of hating the body she was trapped in. It hurt to realise he'd never seen the woman who raised him happy, and never fully realised it until now.

Gil breathed silently and waited among the onlookers until she had made her selections. He'd meant to step forward, but her gaze fell on him almost as soon as she'd turned from the enthralled tailor.

'Master Gilgamesh.' Otilia smiled at him more warmly than she had ever done as Von Pinn. Gil couldn't quite analyse _how_, when her face looked like it had been built for expressionless serenity, but he was sure she did it. He tried not to think too hard about how. Even Sparks usually had to be fairly drunk before they were comfortable with somebody concentrating on the physiological basis of their facial expressions during a social conversation.

He smiled back up at her. Looking up to her almost felt familiar; he'd been taller than Von Pinn when he left for Paris, but not for long. 'Madame Otilia. It's...' Words failed him for a moment. 'Good to see you enjoying yourself.'

She inclined her head and made a chiming sound that he interpreted after a second's bafflement as a chuckle. 'I have never chosen my own clothing before, but I had considerable opportunities to observe.'

'You _could_ have,' Gil said, feeling a little helpless.

Otilia looked along the corridor, and they began walking together. She waited until the crowd had thinned away before saying, 'The leather was practical, it was hard wearing and I could feel very little through it.' She tipped her head slightly, looking away from him. 'And what would I have looked like, in a silk gown, a monster with sharp teeth and claws half as long as my fingers?'

'Not as strange as you seem to think,' Gil said. It crossed his mind to tell her she would have looked lovely, but he didn't think that would help. In Paris much more improbable creatures had walked the streets in silk, although he had to admit it hadn't suited the octopus very well. 'Although I suppose we'd have spoilt it, spilling milk and soup and things.'

'Messy children,' she said, smiling wistfully. 'I don't suppose I shall have that problem again.'

'I'm not sure what Father intends to do about the school.' Maybe tell everybody the crisis that required sending them home had been resolved and try to collect them again. Most of them had been allowed home periodically anyway. 'What are you planning?'

Otilia was silent for a moment. Then she said, almost too quietly to be heard, 'Did you come to persuade me not to guard the Heterodyne Girl?'

The phrasing made his spine prickle, after what Agatha had told him about her confusion. He tried not to show it. 'I don't know,' he said. 'Do you want me to? What is it you want to do?'

'I do not know. I was made to help steer the course of Empires and failed at that almost immediately. Lucrezia refashioned me to guard her children and I failed at that more quickly still. I succeeded better with you.'

'I always thought you were great,' said Gil. It hadn't occurred to him that a Muse might regard the fall of the Storm King's empire as a personal failure. 'And somehow I really doubt any of Valois's problems could plausibly be your fault.'

'We were meant to guide him subtly, which meant when he didn't want to listen we were easy to ignore. If I had known then what I know now I might have smacked him and forced him to hear it.' She looked a bit startled by her own words and then smiled. 'I would certainly have shocked my creator, if I had.'

Gil grinned wryly. 'Do you think it would have helped? Sun keeps saying that doesn't work on Father.'

'It might have. He spoke to us more naturally the one time we were able to give him a plain warning,' Otilia said pensively. 'For someone who liked politics and negotiation as well as he did, my King was not best pleased by advisors who found it necessary to speak obliquely.'

He looked up at her thoughtfully. 'You don't seem to find that necessary now.'

'I am not speaking as your advisor.'

And yet she thought she might have been able to speak more plainly then, if she'd tried. Gil gnawed at the problem a moment and decided he needed more information. 'If you don't mind my asking,' he said slowly, 'and if it's something you can describe, how do you... experience their orders?' The wording was important and could sometimes override probable intent. But he wasn't sure if it was something that simply became a priority for her or something like the Other's orders to Rovainen that he'd been forced to carry out in despair or somewhere in between. And he wasn't going to make leading speculations out loud, he told himself sternly, before she'd had a chance to answer him.

'If you were hungry and did not wish to eat.' She stopped. 'No, that makes it a physical thing. If it was important that you did not build, and you were in a room with a great many mechanical parts you had not seen before, could you resist?'

Gil rubbed the back of his neck and wondered if there was any way to reply that wouldn't be awkward. She had been aware of his breakthrough, not exactly at the time but shortly afterward. She'd been extremely stern with him if he started Sparking in the school; she'd also helped cover for getting him out for secret lab time. 'I'm a lot better at that than when I was eight,' he said. 'Between you and Father. But...' Oh. And maybe this part was really her point. 'I'm not sure I could do it _permanently_. And wouldn't really want to.'

'I wasn't thinking,' she said softly. 'You did very well at hiding it even then. I...would not want to disobey, precisely. The urge to do my creator's and my master's will was a part of me from the start, it is not like the imposition of Lucrezia's will. But I would like to avoid obeying orders I already know are obsolete.' She hitched her wings, a brief rise and fall that might have been analogous to a sigh. 'I always tried to teach my students not to give in to their desires when it was stupid. I thought myself a different kind of being, free from the need for self-control.'

'You always taught it pretty well,' said Gil. 'And that might still make it a good metaphor.' He wished vaguely for something to fidget with. He'd never been very good at doing _nothing_ with his hands while he was thinking. He supposed he could take apart his watch but it was easy to lose pieces if he did that while walking. 'You know neither of them could have actually meant Agatha,' he said after a moment. 'But the phrasing means it's still in effect. Is that right?'

'Yes. It doesn't help that there are some good reasons to keep an eye on her. But no more than there are to keep an eye on several people I'm not required to watch.'

Gil nodded. 'To be honest, I'm still astonished Father is offering her as much trust as he is.' He'd seemed so very adamantly against the idea the last time they'd discussed Agatha before her reappearance... which had admittedly been when he was sending Gil out to get her, so it had been several weeks, but still. 'Although it's not as if she'll be going completely unmonitored.' A pause. 'Hopefully neither are any of the other people you've got in mind.'

'You and your father are two of them.'

Gil blinked. 'Heh. Okay, fair enough.' That probably meant in both senses, too. 'With regard to Agatha,' he said slowly, 'would just being involved work? Keeping up with what she's doing, without necessarily having to live with her?'

'I don't know. If it was a case of what I feel necessary, then yes. I'm hardly in a position to advise her at this point, and if she causes trouble deliberately I don't know that my presence would prevent that either. Adding orders to that...perhaps so long as I was involved I could consider myself to be obeying them.'

'That wouldn't be hard to arrange at all,' Gil said hopefully. 'Nor would visits, I'd think.' Assuming Agatha didn't decide to ban Otilia from her town, which would make it awkward. But she probably wouldn't as long as Otilia didn't try to inter her again. 'We'll have people back and forth a lot.' What with the wasp-eaters. Not to mention, unless his father managed to persuade Sun to leave Mechanicsburg's Great Hospital - which seemed unlikely - they'd probably be back for the next serious injury or newly discovered plague.

'Visits.' Otilia tilted her head and smiled faintly. 'Yes, visits might work well. Though I hope you are not planning to make me an ambassador.'

Gil laughed. 'Not to Agatha, and not if you don't want to be. Who knows, though, you might be good at it.' She'd certainly impress people. She'd have to be very heavily guarded, of course.

'That would be a new use for me,' Otilia said, looking as if she wasn't quite sure what to think of it yet.

'Job,' Gil said firmly.

She smiled at him for that, and when she spoke she sounded both relieved and tired. 'I suppose I shall have time to consider new jobs if I'm not tied to Mechanicsburg.' It should have sounded strange to hear weariness in a clank's voice. In a way it did, although her voice was perfectly expressive it had a strange purity to it that sounded inhuman. None of the small accidental sounds of lips or tongue, only the distilled essence of their deliberate speech. But he knew she had feelings and it wasn't surprising that she could still be worn out emotionally even if she no longer could be physically.

Gil smiled back. He shared the relief, and he was pretty sure Agatha would too. 'Yes, you will.'

* * *

Much to Agatha's relief, Otilia did not insist on accompanying her back to Mechanicsburg the next morning, nor the two days following. The Baron did, but he didn't seem to feel compelled to kill her. In fact, he was not only helpful but a surprisingly good sport about Castle Heterodyne periodically ejecting him in a fit of paranoia.

After the fourth time - and figuring out how to fix it - Agatha went out looking for him, partly as an excuse for sun and fresh air, and found him elbow-deep in the workings of a rather overcomplicated fountain. A cup of tea that smelt remarkably like gingerbread was balanced on the rim, and she made a note to herself to find the shop that sold it. They probably advertised by scent. 'You're taking this well,' she said.

'I've known Castle Heterodyne for a long time,' he answered.

'It might have been more rational as a Muse,' she said, 'and that part of it tried to strangle me when it woke up. Anyway, I think we've got it straightened out for now. I've left von Zinzer directing the repairs.' Along with Tiktoffen, Moloch von Zinzer had unexpectedly been one of the most helpful of the prisoners. After reading the list of convictions, Agatha didn't feel bad about expecting labour out of _most_ of the prisoners - although Merlot's reaction to seeing her had got him trussed up in a net by the Jägers - but she'd told von Zinzer she'd understand if he wanted to sit things out in a relatively safe part of the Castle. Somehow he had gone from muttering that he probably owed her for the threats and anyway he wanted this done as soon as possible, to confidently and convincingly ordering the imprisoned Sparks around.

'I regret not realising his actual talents when I had him aboard,' said the Baron resignedly.

'I'm not sure he knew about them either.' Agatha climbed onto the fountain, carefully, to see what he was doing to it. 'I still can't believe you sent him here for _conspiring with Gil._'

'He was conspiring to hide a powerful Spark from me,' said the Baron.

'With Gil!' Agatha snorted. 'Anyway, von Zinzer didn't even think I was a Spark. He just wanted to live long enough to get away from you.'

'I think this is nearly fixed,' said the Baron, not answering that. 'It was one of the odder things to have to keep breaking.'

'I was wondering about that,' Agatha said, letting him have the change of subject. He had given her a list of things in Mechanicsburg he'd had sabotaged, and she was curious about it. 'I can at least see a lot of it if you thought people might go raiding, but I don't think the fountains are very portable. Even turning them into siege engines would be awkward.'

'Not prohibitive, but very inefficient,' the Baron agreed. 'No, once the roads were reasonably safe to travel and the Jägers weren't home, Mechanicsburg had very little incentive to go back to raiding. Why bother when people brought their money here themselves?' A lightly sardonic smile. 'But you have some skittish neighbours... and ones I did not want to leave an excuse for building up their own "defenses" too much. Besides, it kept your townspeople busy and feeling I was adequately thwarted.'

'I see.' That... actually made more sense. Agatha handed him the wrench he was reaching for. 'Do you actually remember how to work with people who are trying to cooperate?'

'I confess I don't get a lot of practice.'

'Oh boy,' Agatha muttered, not quite under her breath. That didn't seem to bode well. On the other hand, he wasn't exactly doing a bad job of it so far. And actually being in Mechanicsburg drove home how much he was offering to trust her in a way that the words of the treaty had not. He wasn't just sending his researchers into a town he neither practically nor legally controlled, but one where their safety depended on her authority over a Castle with a malevolent sense of humour and a reach that extended well past the town walls. Not to mention his personal physician lived here. 'Flippancy aside,' she said finally, 'I don't really think you've forgotten.'

'Flippancy aside,' he agreed, 'I do _employ_ people who work with me rather than against me.'

'Which I hear still includes Otilia,' she said. 'I'm relieved. Are you really thinking of making her an ambassador?' Gil had mentioned that. Agatha could only assume Otilia would be _really_ heavily guarded. She seemed at a higher than average risk of being kidnapped and taken apart than the average ambassador.

'What?' he said, eyebrows raising. 'No one has suggested that to me. I think she'd prefer to stay with the school once I have it running again.'

'Ah,' said Agatha, a bit uncomfortably. Probably so, then. 'I hadn't realised you were planning on that.'

'Well, I'm no longer expecting a significant portion of my army to suddenly decide to avenge you. And if there is a war now it will be a different kind. With wasps as a threat they'll be safer somewhere off the ground where quarantine procedures are easier.'

'You can't protect every child in Europa that way, but yes, I suppose they would.' She tried not to grimace. 'I suppose some of them may be related to whoever's working on the wasps.' And then what? '_Have_ you ever had people rebel even when you had their children?'

'Of course. Many of them are Sparks.'

'Er.' Oh dear. She'd snapped at him herself about doubting that hostages would make that much difference to the Sparks you really had to worry about. 'What did you do?'

He blinked at her, looking up from where he'd been loosening a series of bolts. 'Defeated them, of course…. No, I did _not_ take it out on their children!'

'Well, it is sort of an implied point in calling somebody a hostage!'

'They were under my protection,' he said grumpily. 'There were two deaths throughout.'

Agatha thought about that for a moment. Sixteen years, nearly. The size of the student body implied by the accommodations, even if most of them hadn't been in at the time. The proportion of them who were likely to have turned out as Sparks and possibly broken through on board. The kind of chances the ones she'd met seemed to think were fun to take. 'That's pretty impressive, actually,' she admitted. 'What happened with the two?'

'One was Zulenna,' said the Baron pensively. Agatha flinched. 'The other came aboard infected with Luxembourg Measles.'

Agatha looked down at the fountain mechanism. It wasn't the first she'd heard about what happened to Zulenna - on the second day aboard, she'd worked up the courage to ask Gil about the students who'd stayed behind as she ran. He'd even said it was a quick resurrection. But it had still _happened_, for her sake and presumably at the hands of the Baron's own people.

The death from Luxembourg Measles, on the other hand, had probably been permanent. It was a really nasty strain, Spark-modified; the infection was contagious for days before the symptoms became obvious and the fever tended to be almost literally brain-melting. If that didn't get you then the runny nose, of all things, usually led to dehydration. 'I'm surprised that one didn't lead to more.'

'Sun's _very_ good.'

Agatha's eyebrows went up. 'Apparently.' She connected a few mental dots. 'Oh. That's when the vaccine was developed, wasn't it?' It wasn't very widely used yet, but outbreaks tended to be accompanied by a flurry of immunisation efforts before they managed to burn themselves out.

'Yes. Sun does a lot of work on immunisation,' the Baron answered. 'He's managed to develop vaccines for a number of things.'

Something Gil had said, about being inoculated against diseases that didn't yet exist in Europa. 'Most of which are tested on you and Gil?'

'Being hard to kill is useful for a leader,' he said seriously.

'I'm sure it's useful for anyone,' Agatha said, amused. 'Most people don't try to accomplish it by testing experimental vaccines, though.'

The Baron raised his eyebrows. 'Most people don't have anyone likely to deliberately infect them.'

'That... is probably true.' At least on a targeted basis. 'Do you normally come here or get Dr. Sun to Castle Wulfenbach?'

'Mostly he comes to Castle Wulfenbach, unless it's a live infection,' said the Baron. 'Why?'

'Just curi-' Agatha stopped. '_Unless it's a live infection?_'

'Some of them don't work with a dead one,' said the Baron in a reasonable tone of voice. 'And it's carefully supervised.'

'I'll... keep that in mind,' Agatha said. So apparently he and Gil might be visiting her town for the specific purpose of being ill. Well, apparently it hadn't killed them so far. Returning to an earlier line of thought, she added, 'How many breakthroughs have you had at the school?' And _all_ the budding Sparks survived them?

'We have two to four per year. I deploy a lot of blast shields, and Madame Von Pinn - Otilia - is very good at confiscating things. I have been working on ways to make breakthrough more survivable, but there's still been a lot of luck involved.'

Agatha looked at him thoughtfully. 'I suppose there would have to be, but a perfect record after more than thirty suggests you're not relying on it much.'

'No. Mostly I'm relying on blast shields.' He fiddled a bit more with the fountain - Agatha thought the device he was fixing might be meant to electrify it - before continuing with, 'And teaching the students to apply their Spark to things other than deeply annoyed wolverine hybrids. Most of the ones who made constructs at least made ones they could talk to and then did so.'

'I can certainly see where that would help. Especially since I assume you mean they talked to them _sensibly_.' Asserting one's authority was a common response, which was not necessarily wise but also wasn't surprising considering Agatha had noticed she herself got very bossy when in the grip of the Spark. What she found more perplexing was the tendency to insult one's new creation.

'Fairly sensibly.' His lips quirked into an unexpected smile. '"Wow, I really made you, you have the _best_ hooves" is perhaps not the most coherent thing anyone's ever said to their creation, but it doesn't lead to rampaging.'

Agatha laughed delightedly. 'I can think of a lot worse things to start life hearing.'

He finished tuning the device and picked up the wrench again to start bolting it back into place. 'I think it helped that they were cared for by a construct at the school. None of them doubted Madame Von Pinn had feelings.'

'Ah.' Agatha didn't doubt Otilia had feelings, in her own self or as Von Pinn - and even if the first one Agatha had personally encountered had been unreasonable fury, that probably hadn't been a universal experience. She pushed her hair back. 'You're probably right. I hadn't exactly thought about that. I... can still remember realising how a lot of people looked at constructs, but it didn't exactly occur to me that it would be possible to... not… know that.'

'When you could hardly avoid knowing that, having been brought up by them yourself,' the Baron said. 'People make a lot of assumptions about constructs - perhaps not helped by the fact that it's often the badly made ones that are the most obviously constructs, even as they're the least mentally reliable. Even Punch and Judy were managing to hide their nature in Beetleburg, weren't they?'

Agatha glanced up from the fountain mechanism. 'Yes,' she said after a moment. Now how had he known that? Maybe because nobody had mentioned their being constructs when he'd had people looking for them? 'They had a lot of friends who couldn't.'

'And you grew up knowing them as well?'

Agatha's mouth quirked. 'Once I was old enough to stay up as late as they usually visited.'

'I suppose Punch and Judy will be staying with you, now, rather than returning to Beetleburg once they've recovered. I hope we'll be able to convince them I'm not actually working for the Other, or this is going to be very awkward.'

Agatha fumbled a pair of pliers and had to jump down into the fountain's pool to retrieve it. 'Uh, _what_? Do you have reason to think they think that?'

'It was in Beetle's notes, which have now been decrypted. What's left of them. It seems it was something Barry told him,' he said, frustration thrumming through his voice. 'I have no idea _why_ he would have thought that, though. Or why they would have believed it.'

Agatha pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead. 'I guess it's not a _rare_ rumour, but it's certainly an odd conclusion for friends of yours.' Unless they'd had extraordinarily compelling evidence. But what could they have had, when everything she saw seemed to point in the exact opposite direction? 'I'll see what I can do. Thanks for the warning.'

He looked at her thoughtfully for a few moments. 'I'm glad you're not considering believing it.'

Agatha blinked, realising she'd somehow assumed he wouldn't have mentioned it if he thought she might. But of course, as soon as Adam and Lilith could communicate again... 'I already knew,' she said slowly, and found herself speaking gently because eventually it had started occurring to her that _he_ had feelings, 'that they didn't trust you. I've been assuming they had what seemed like solid reasons, and working with you anyway because you gave me solid reasons for that.'

'Thank you.' He briskly tightened the last few bolts on the part he'd been fixing as he said it, looking away from her and at the task in hand. 'At least you'll be able to talk to them, here, without them wanting to take you anywhere else.'

'I should hope so.' Their last conversation had been, putting it mildly, hectic. 'This _is_ where Lilith told me to go.' That Castle Heterodyne would help her. Agatha paused, really trying for the first time to imagine Lilith, here, strict, _good_, homey, ladylike Lilith sharing space with the Castle and its ideas of suitable behaviour. 'And, ah, maybe she can take up arguing with the Castle about whether I ought to be pregnant already.' Three days ago she'd have been mortified to say such a thing to the Baron. Three days ago she hadn't yet watched him roll his eyes as her Castle lamented that the Heterodyne Boys hadn't been willing to make some reproductive adjustments and marry him.

'I expect she will,' said the Baron, not quite hiding a smile. 'She was always up to anything it could throw at her.'

'And taught the Jägers to knit,' Agatha said, grinning, 'which I still have trouble picturing even now I've seen some of them do it.'

'It isn't the hobby you'd expect from them,' the Baron agreed absently, giving the fountain a quick look over and tapping a few bolts to check they were on properly, before tapping a switch at its base.

'Wait-' Agatha began, too late, and the fountain jetted water violently in all directions, drenching both of them. Agatha lost her balance and wound up in the pool again - still upright, but this didn't make much difference, and laughing.

The water died down as the Baron flipped the switch back off and he reached out a hand to her, half-way to laughter himself. 'At least it wasn't weaponised yet.'

'Sorry, sorry! I cleaned several years of gunk out of the pressure control and I think it needs recalibrating.' Agatha wiped hair out of her face, then took the Baron's hand and let him pull her up. A few minutes later, they turned it back on again and stepped out ahead of a much gentler curtain of spray that turned the afternoon sun into rippling rainbows. Agatha watched it for a moment. 'Thank you.'

'No need to thank me. I did break it.' He looked down at her for a moment. 'And in fact, between your Castle's paranoia and - I suspect - your taking the comment about taxes too much to heart, I haven't done nearly as much as I expected.

Agatha flushed. 'You've done a lot. And I'm perfectly well aware _Mechanicsburg_ has paid taxes for the past fourteen years.' …But it was still sort of true. She wrung out her hair. 'I should go check on the-' She stopped, and both of them looked around, as there was a sudden grinding groan. 'Castle?'

'My lady,' said the Castle, happily, 'you should come and prepare for the ceremony. It is time to ring the Doom Bell. I see you've already had your bath.'

Agatha stared up at the towers. They were moving. Slowly. Ponderously. Surely stone towers shouldn't move fast if they moved at all, and yet…. 'Really?'

'Yes, of course, I-' The Castle broke off abruptly. Then, sounding stricken, it spoke very quietly to her. 'No. My lady, this is for your ears only. The main power source at the Dyne has been repaired. I can stretch my senses throughout the town. But my energy reserves are distressingly low. I would secure your recognition, as my last act if necessary, but if you expect a war - I can do far less than I would like to defend you.'

'Okay, hold off a minute.' Agatha stared up at the towers and then focussed on the highest of them and the slender rods at the very top, and thought about Adam and Lilith's generators and about the circuits she'd traced through the Castle. 'Herr Baron,' she said, 'What if I borrowed Gil's lightning generators?'

* * *

The sky was full of louring charcoal clouds and the streets were full of people staring at them instead of going indoors. Agatha was keeping an eye on them herself, but she wouldn't have expected them to arrest so much attention that Baron Wulfenbach or the Jägergenerals had to tap people on the shoulder to get through the crowd.

Agatha herself had an excellent vantage point and no travel difficulties: she was sitting on the roof of Castle Heterodyne's tallest tower with Dimo, Maxim, Oggie, and... Otilia. Who had apparently decided this was worth dropping in for after all.

'I really wish you'd go inside,' Agatha said to the Muse. 'I keep worrying you're going to fall off the roof.'

'But not that anyone else will?' said Otilia, sounding offended.

Agatha looked around at her companions. 'I'm sitting down and the other three are Jägers. You're a Muse, you haven't been in that body for years, and I didn't think to check your feet for traction because it didn't occur to me you'd want to stand on a roof!'

'My balance is fine,' said Otilia.

'On wet tile? It's probably going to start raining soon.' The air tasted like lightning now. The collectors were fixed, stretching eager fingers to the sky, and Agatha's own skin was prickling with anticipation. But the clouds that had gathered with the charge were too heavy for a dry storm. And there it was, starting, a spatter of raindrops. She snapped shut the panel on the focus device across her knees. (She could think of ways to make it water-resistant even when opened. Not now, though.) 'Will you at least sit down?'

'If you insist.' Otilia sat neatly on the roof, wings spread behind her and showing transparent circles where stray droplets hit, and looked at Agatha with deliberate tolerance. 'What now?'

'Lightning!' said Oggie. He and Maxim were staring up happily at the gathering storm, occasionally blinking away raindrops. Dimo was still watching Agatha.

'In a minute,' Agatha said, turning to grin at Oggie. 'I want to let the charge build up a little more first.' Just not so much it would let itself off. The condensers were partly designed to discourage that, but she wasn't sure how well that function would work.

'You've climbed up to a rooftop,' said Otilia, 'that you intend to have struck by lightning.'

'The collectors should gather in most of it.' Agatha glanced at her again. 'Although there'll probably be a little spill. Ah, you're not overly sensitive to that, are you?'

Otilia looked at her blandly. 'Each of my sisters was built with the ability to release an electrical charge strong enough to scorch a man's flesh from his bones and the control to merely render him unconscious.'

Agatha rested the focus device on her knees a moment and stared at Otilia. 'That did _not_ make it into most of the records about you.'

'It was not an ability our Creator advertised.' Otilia added pensively, 'And it is of little use against a Spark with sufficient electrical insulation.'

'Ah... I suppose not.' Agatha waited a moment longer, watching the sky, and then stood up, raised the focus device to point at the main collecting rod, and activated it.

The world went blue-white around her, the rain sheeted down and tingled against her skin, and when she could hear herself again through the thunder she was laughing wildly.

Behind her Oggie and Maxim were going 'Ooh!' at the lightning, sounding like kids at a fireworks display. The stone beneath them started to grind, the towers around them that had been slowly shifting upright lurching into place. Below them there was cheering, and a few enthusiastic snatches of song, 'Bring down the lightning,' among them. Lightning flashed again, a huge fork splitting the sky and arching over Mechanicsburg to ground itself just beyond the gates, and again, huge and jagged and so close to the town that Agatha wondered if the focus device had had a knock on effect.

'So?' She crouched down again and knocked lightly on the roof tiles. 'Feeling better?'

'_Yes!_ I believe I am fully repaired and ready to ring the Doom Bell when you wish.'

'It's certainly showink off enuff,' said Dimo, looking at the lightning with wry appreciation rather than the open enjoyment of the other two Jägers.

Agatha looked over at him with interest. '_It_ is?'

'Ho yez,' he said, grinning at her.

'You don't like the display?' said the Castle innocently, arcing another impressive bolt across the sky. 'What do you think, Otilia?'

Otilia made a very soft and somewhat startled chiming sound. 'Somewhat overdramatic,' she said.

'If you're doing all that, I don't have to tell Gil to watch out for secondary effects,' Agatha said cheerfully. 'It's very pretty. Don't hit anyone.'

'I'm glad you like it,' said the Castle, smugly.

It _was_ a good show. Agatha patted the roof and sat there being drenched, glad her work clothes were warm ones, and tried to decide if her house was flirting with Otilia.

When she started to feel uncomfortably chilled, she got up and wrung herself out, sending a gush of extra water to splash on the tiles. 'Okay. I'll go get cleaned up and dressed in something that isn't sopping, and then when it stops raining we can do the Doom Bell.'

'I can make sure everyone attends even if it's still raining, my lady.'

Oh, dear. Agatha let Maxim hand her gallantly down through the trapdoor. 'I'm not sure you got a good look at my dress yet,' she told the Castle cheerfully. 'Trust me, it's better in sunlight.'

By the time Agatha had washed and changed - and Zeetha unexpectedly conspired with Otilia to do something surprisingly elaborate with her wet braid - the rain was already letting up and the streets were filling again with excited people. The Baron, the generals, and Otilia joined her as an escort. This was when Agatha found out there was a script.

'You're serious,' she said.

'Entirely,' said the Castle.

Agatha eyed the Baron. 'You are enjoying this far too much.'

'Oh, probably,' he said, as unrepentantly as the Castle.

Agatha had never felt quite so ridiculous as when she shouted 'Tremble before me!' across Mechanicsburg. But the bell rang, and not only the people but the town trembled. The Baron went a little pale, the older generations in the town cheered wildly, and much of the younger generation and all the tourists passed out en masse.

Agatha found herself listening for something else as the sound died away and then pushed it aside because she was busy being exasperated at everybody who'd heard the Doom Bell before for not warning her about the effects on the uninitiated. 'You could have _said something_,' she growled at the Jägers. The Baron looked a little too grey to growl at.

Zeetha, oddly, was grinning as exultantly as the Jägers when she hugged Agatha, although she did spare the collapsed crowds a concerned look. 'They'll be okay,' she said. 'You did great.'

Agatha relented and hugged her back. And then made her way down and spent the next few hours patting hands in the Great Hospital while Sun made sure everyone really _would_ be okay.

(A few months later, she would find out this had formed much of her reputation throughout Europe.)


End file.
